


Burn My Bridges Down

by kaerstyne



Category: Star Wars Legends: X-Wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole
Genre: Case Fic, F/M, Pre-Relationship (Take Two), Reunions, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-20 23:14:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16564937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaerstyne/pseuds/kaerstyne
Summary: Myn makes an emergency landing on a remote planet after a mission, and reunites with someone he wasn't expecting to see...by walking straight into her undercover op.





	1. Encounter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elsajeni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsajeni/gifts).



A single X-wing snubfighter roared through hyperspace.

Or at least, it was supposed to. And it had been, up until the point where it abruptly dropped back to realspace, and the engines let out an ominous rattle.

Myn frowned down at his console. "Clink, what's happening?"

The astromech offered up a series of whistles and beeps. `There is a malfunction in the hyperdrive. Attempting repairs.`

"Well, at least we didn't drop out in the middle of a star, I guess." Myn leaned back in the pilot's seat and tried to stretch the crick out of his neck. They'd been in hyperspace for several hours already, on the way back to base after yet another Rogue Squadron mission mopping up some of the remains of Thrawn's forces. Not the most exciting mission, but they'd had plenty of kills and no casualties of their own, so he was pretty happy with how everything went.

Up until the part where he'd gotten dropped out of hyperspace in the middle of the nowhere on the way home, anyway. "Clink, where are we?" he asked, peering out the canopy of the X-wing. He could see a large, mostly green planet some distance away on his starboard side, but that was about it.

`Corellian Sector, Polanis System, near the planet Vilath.`

"Corellian sector, huh." Home sweet home, but not exactly friendly to wayward New Republic pilots. "How's the hyperdrive looking?"

The beeps sounded distinctly annoyed this time. `The field driver is inoperative. I can't repair it, and we can't enter hyperspace again without it.`

"So we need to replace it."

`Yes.`

"And I take it we don't have a spare one of those lying around."

`Affirmative.`

"Of course." He glanced through the canopy at the planet again. "Is Vilath over there inhabited?"

`There is one registered settlement on the far side.`

"Then I guess that's where we're going. Hopefully they'll have a replacement part, or at least another ship we can steal." Myn grabbed the control yoke, rolled the X-wing to starboard, and gunned the engines.

 

* * *

 

Up close, it turned out that much of Vilath was covered in thick forest. Myn flew the snubfighter along the planet's curvature toward the settlement coordinates Clink provided, slowly descending into the atmosphere.

They were about halfway to their destination when there was another rattle from the engines, this time followed by a loud pop, and suddenly they were descending a lot faster than Myn was pushing on the yoke. "Uh, Clink—"

`Critical failure of lower port engine.` The droid trilled urgently. `Recommend immediate landing to carry out full repairs.`

"I think we're having an immediate landing whether we like it or not," he said with a grimace, wrestling with the flight stick as he tried to slow their descent. "Did something hit us?"

`Negative. The lower port engine is near the inoperative field driver, so I suspect the area suffered damage during the previous combat engagement.`

"And you didn't notice that before now?!" He'd managed to slow them somewhat, but the trees were becoming distressingly close, and he couldn't spot any obvious open areas.

An irritated whistle. `There were no signs of significant damage before we entered hyperspace. Damage to the rear fuselage was cosmetic only.`

"Apparently not!" There: a gap in the trees, hopefully leading to a clearing. Myn swerved the X-wing toward it and started extending the landing gear. "Hang on back there, Clink, this might get bumpy."

He didn't need to glance at the console to understand the sequence of rapid beeps he got in reply, which was good, because there were a lot more leaves and branches filling his view through the canopy now that he needed to focus on not hitting. He flew them into gap in the leaves, managing to only clip a few trees on the way in, and killed the thrusted as they descended into the clearing. He fought to keep them more or less steady, and a few overwhelming moments later they arrived on the ground, landing hard enough to make him wince.

Clink started the shutdown procedures, and Myn took a few long breaths. When the engines were fully off, he pried his hands carefully off the yoke and shook out the stiffness in his fingers. "How'd we do?"

`Lower port engine at 12% capacity. Upper port engine at 74% capacity. Minor hull damage to the fuselage and S-foils. Landing gear still intact.`

"Well, could be worse." He groaned and reached up to pull off his helmet. "Let's get out there and see if we can figure out what the hell happened."

He popped the canopy and pulled himself out of the cockpit, landing softly on the moss-covered ground next to the snubfighter. The trees in the forest were almost neverendingly tall, the sky barely visible in brief glimpses between the leaves far, far above. The air was damp, and he could hear a near-constant buzzing of insects, which he suspected he'd have to get used to. Hopefully the insects were the biggest lifeforms around for a while.

Myn walked in a circle around the X-wing, frowning up at it as he inspected the damage. Definitely some hull damage from the trees, but he didn't see any obvious cracks in the canopy, and the landing gear had held up. He spotted some scorch marks on the rear fuselage, and leaned in to take a closer—

There was a rustle of leaves from behind him, and he whirled around, reaching for his blaster. The one he wasn't wearing, because it was still in the X-wing.

A woman stood a few meters away, wearing a dark jumpsuit and holding up her own blaster, aimed right at Myn. She had long red hair, tied up in a tight ponytail, and her eyes were the wrong color, but when he looked at her face it was _definitely_ —

"Lara?!"

The woman stared at him for a long moment, eyes widening, then lowered her blaster. "Myn?!"


	2. Entanglement

Kirney lowered her blaster, completely failing to keep her surprise off her face. "Myn?! What are you doing here?"

Myn gaped back at her. "What are _you_ doing here?!"

Kirney sighed and holstered the blaster. "I'm...doing something." Smooth, Slane, real smooth. "I run a business in this sector. _You're_ supposed to be off cavorting around the galaxy fighting Imperials."

"Well, I was." Myn glanced over at his X-wing. "Then I, uh, crashed."

That much had been obvious, from the awful racket he'd made smashing through the trees and the somewhat sorry state of his snubfighter. "Look, Myn—" An insistent beeping from the comlink at her waist cut her off. She grimaced, then answered it. "Sarn here."

"Did you find it?" said the voice on the other end, crackling with static.

She gave Myn a sidelong glance. "No, nothing here. It must have landed farther to the east."

"Dammit. Keep looking and report back if you find any signs of it."

"Will do, sir." She turned the comlink off and reattached it to her belt. She ran a hand through her hair, not quite able to hold back an exasperated sigh. This was going to make everything so much more complicated.

Myn was still staring at her in confusion. "Lara, what's going on?"

"First of all, it's not Lara anymore. It's Kirney now." She waved a hand. "Except it's not actually that right now, either, but for you it's fine."

"Kirney, then. What are you up to here? I thought you were starting a shuttle business."

"I did. And I'll explain the rest, but first we need to hide that—" she pointed at the X-wing "—unless you want it to get dismantled and sold on the black market."

His brow furrowed, and he clearly wanted to ask another question, but all he said was "I have a camouflage cover in the cargo hold."

"Good. Let's set it up, and I'll explain."

 

* * *

 

Kirney _had_ started a shuttle business soon after she'd arrived on Corellia, using the ship she'd taken off the _Iron Fist_. And it had been going pretty well, really. It was still too early for business to be booming, precisely, but they'd done some good jobs and were starting to eke out a reputation for themselves.

And then along came the Dalyrakes—"you know, like [those giant creepy mantis things](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dalyrake)"—a local criminal organization that was looking to expand its influence. They'd started approaching various businesses in the area and offering them "protection" while they traveled through the dangerous spaceways of the Corellian Sector. Kirney had rolled her eyes and turned them down, of course, and that had been it for a while.

Then on her next cargo haul to Selonia, a small swarm of Uglies had appeared out of nowhere and taken potshots at her shuttle. Sure, they didn't manage to do any real damage, but _boy_ was she pissed off at them for trying to screw with her.

There were several ways she could have gone about dealing with this little problem. But she'd been a Wraith, and a spy before that, and there were few things more satisfying than destroying an arrogant bag of hot air from the inside. So she'd thrown together a quick identity under the name Fiona Sarn, finagled her way into the Dalyrakes' membership, and gotten them to trust her enough to bring her to their main base, here on Vilath. Where they kept all their records.

It had been a month or so of setup, and she was so close to the payoff—she'd already initiated the final stage her scheme, and had planned to be out of here within a few days. Myn's arrival complicated things. Now she needed to finish up what she'd come here to to, _and_ help figure out how to get him safely off this rock and back to the New Republic fleet. This was...doable. Probably. Not like it was the first time she'd had to adapt an operation on the fly.

But the fact that it was _Myn_ and not just some random pilot was making it a lot harder for her to focus on logistics. Especially when he kept staring at her like he thought she might disappear again if he looked away.

"You know," she said, after they'd finished tying down the camouflage cover over the X-wing and she'd given him a rundown on the situation, "when I said you should come visit me on Corellia sometime, this wasn't quite what I had in mind."

Myn chuckled at that, his mouth quirking into a rueful smile. "I wanted to do it properly, really. But I'd just transferred to Rogue Squadron when I got your message, and I didn't want to abandon them as soon as I got there. And then Thrawn showed up and we were all pretty busy for a while..."

"I can imagine." Corellia might not have been on the front lines of the confrontation with Thrawn, but that didn't mean the ripples of the conflict hadn't made their way to the system. It had wreaked havoc with her transport schedule for a while. "Wait, Rogue Squadron? You abandoned the Wraiths?"

"Wraith Squadron got converted into a full Intelligence unit after Selaggis." He shrugged. "I wanted to be a pilot, not a secret agent."

"As a career secret agent, I can't really blame you for this." Kirney fingered the comlink at her waist. "I'd love to hear more about this, but I should probably get back soon, before they get suspicious. And we still need to figure out a plan."

"Clink said there was a settlement on the other side of the planet; my plan was to head there and hope they had something I could use."

She shook her head. "The town isn't there anymore. The Dalyrakes blew half of it out of existence when they first made their base here, and everyone else was scared off after that."

"Of course they did, that's just how my luck works today." He ran a hand through his hair. "So the only way out of here is through the pirates."

"And they're not going to be too happy about a New Republic pilot showing up out of nowhere. Most likely they'd just shoot you and take the X-wing for themselves. So you need to lay low and stay away from them."

"Right." He considered for a moment. "They wouldn't happen to have X-wing replacement parts, would they?"

"They fly Uglies; they have parts for everything." Yes, that was it. The plan was forming in her mind now. "Can you get Clink to give me a list of what you'd need to make it flyable again? I have an idea."

 

* * *

 

After Kirney left with the list of parts, Myn ducked under the camo cover to check the contents of the cargo hold—especially the emergency rations. Kirney seemed confident she’d be able to get him the parts within the next day or two, so hopefully he wouldn’t be stuck here too long. He didn't relish the idea of sleeping in his cockpit, but he wasn't going to sleep out in the open in the middle of a forest filled with unknown wildlife and possible pirates, either.

It was a good thing Kirney had taken charge of the logistics, because his brain still hadn’t entirely recovered from the shock of seeing her again. They’d never had a chance to talk after the whole...thing where he’d tried to kill her. She didn’t seem to hold it against him, based on the messages she’d sent him before, but he couldn’t help feeling a bit awkward about it, even before all the other emotions he felt about her came into play.

He couldn’t afford to dwell on it too much now—he needed to focus on fixing his X-wing and getting out of here in one piece. They could talk afterward, before he headed back to the fleet. It might delay his return a bit, but he didn’t think Wedge would mind if he told him the reason.

He should probably apologize to her when she came back, though. It was rude to try to kill someone and not tell them you were sorry.

A series of beeps and whistles interrupted his reverie, and he glanced up at their source. Clink was looking at him pointedly. Myn clambered back up into the cockpit and checked the console to see what the droid had to say.

`Are you sure about this, Myn? We are trusting Lara with a lot.`

"I trust her," he said immediately, before he even had time to think about it. Maybe he shouldn’t, after everything she’d done, but she’d proven herself to be a loyal Wraith, even after he’d chased her off. He didn’t think she’d abandon any New Republic pilot in need at this point. Their own history, and the fact that she seemed to still care about him, just made him more certain.

`That is good. I hope the two of you get along again.`

"I do too, buddy. I do too."


	3. Expression

Kirney arrived back at the Dalyrakes' base, parking her speeder bike in the small hangar with the others. She pulled off her helmet and placed it on the bike, then pulled the elastic band out of her tousled hair and shook it out. She was in the middle of tying it back up when she heard heavy footsteps approaching her. She didn't need to look up to guess who they belonged to, and her suspicions were confirmed when a gruff voice boomed out "Sarn!"

She adjusting fixing her hair and stood to attention, meeting Marl Orett, the Dalyrakes' leader, in the eyes. "Yes, sir."

Orett was a large, rough-looking man who claimed to be a veteran of the Corellian armed forces, and used that as his excuse to instill military-esque discipline within his band of pirates. Kirney was pretty sure he'd never been within spitting distance of actual military forces in his life, except when they were shooting at him, and that if he ever did cross their path, they'd have a few words with him for wearing the Bloodstripes unearned. She was, in fact, considering leaving the military an anonymous tip once she was done here.

"You're the last one back," Orett said. "Did you find anything else useful?"

Kirney shook her head. "No, sir. On the way back I saw a cluster of broken trees and went to investigate, but it looked like it was just a fight between some of the panthers."

"Dammit." Orett scratched his beard irritatedly. "Whoever our visitor is, we need to find them and teach them that we don't take kindly to uninvited guests here on Vilath. But I can't afford to keep you all out there looking for them when we still need to prep for Killdrin's arrival."

"Are you sure it's not just Killdrin sending a scout?" Obviously she knew it wasn't, but it wouldn't have been completely out of the question. "We haven't let him come here before, he might want to feel us out before the meeting."

"Nah, that's not his style. He knows this is our home turf, he wouldn't try to fly someone in under the radar to spy on us. No, this is someone else, but I can't think who the hell it would be, and I don't like that, Sarn. I don't like it at all."

"That's completely understandable, sir." She resisted the urge to take a deep breath, and plunged right in to her revised plan. "Actually, I had a thought about that. Since we don't know who this intruder is, we have to assume that they might be hostile, and they might have friends. We should do a readiness check on all the Uglies, to make sure they're in top shape for the meeting in case anyone tries to interfere."

Orett looked thoughtful. "Not a bad idea. Though most of the crew is still busy prepping for the meet, since searching for the intruder cut into prep time. So it might be tricky to find someone to spare."

"I know I'm not one of the usual mechanics, but I'd be happy to help, If we did it tonight. I don't have any more prep to do until the base security checks tomorrow."

"Hmm. In that case, why don't you go grab Arrel or Larbec and see how many the two of you can get through? I'll check in with you in a few hours."

"Sounds good, sir." Kirney threw him a salute, far too sloppy for military grade, and went off to find one of the mechanics.

 

* * *

 

Clink's low warning chirp jolted Myn out of his sleep shortly before he heard a speeder enter the clearing. "Think it's Kirney?" he whispered to the droid, rubbing at his eyes.

`I detect one heat signature, consistent with Kirney's.`

"Thanks, bud." Myn carefully popped the canopy on the X-wing just enough for him to crawl out and hop to the ground. He peered out under the camo cover before emerging, just to be safe, but that was definitely Kirney dismounting from the speeder bike. He walked toward her as she pulled a duffel bag off the back of the bike. "Hey, Kirney."

"Hey." She held up the duffel. "I think I got everything on your list, though some of them are more used than others."

"That was fast." He took the bag, glancing at the pile of parts inside. "Did you just raid the spare parts bin?"

She tossed him a wicked grin, and it was beautiful, and he shouldn't want to kiss her as hard as he suddenly did. "Even better: I took them from the active Uglies. Might as well kill two mynocks with one stone."

Myn whistled. "They won't notice?"

"Not until we're on our way out of here. We just did maintenance on the fighters today, after all, no reason to check them again until it's time to shoot at something."

"Very nice."

With the immediate business taken care of, they descended into an awkward silence, neither of them quite looking the other in the eye. Myn cleared his throat. "Um, Kirney?"

"Yes?"

"I, uh." How did you even do this? "I wanted to apologize for what happened the last time we saw each other. Er, when I tried to kill you."

"Oh." Kirney's face flushed slightly. "It's all right. I can't really blame you, honestly; I'd be pretty angry too, if I were in your shoes." She fiddled with the end of her ponytail. "Did you get my message? At Comkin Five?"

"Yeah." His throat was dry all of a sudden. "That was clever, getting a message through like that."

"I was pretty sure they were monitoring my comms. I had to come up with something." She shrugged one shoulder. "I meant what I said, though. About wanting you to not hate me."

"I don't hate you." The words came out instantly. "I mean, obviously I'm not happy about what happened, but... you've changed. And I like the new version of you, a lot. So I won't hold what the old you did against her."

Kirney smiled, a bit sadly. "Thank you, Myn. That means a lot." She shifted her weight, her posture becoming more businesslike. "I should probably get back soon; I told them I couldn't sleep and wanted to go for a quick ride to get some air, so I can't stay away too long. Let me explain the rest of the plan for now, and we can talk more once we're out of here?"

"Yeah. That sounds good."


	4. Escalation

Two days later, Kirney executed the final stage of her plan.

Killdrin, a mostly-non-criminal associate of Orett's, was making a delivery to the Vilath base, primarily of food and other essential supplies. Orett was extremely paranoid about any non-Dalyrakes coming into the base, even longtime associates, so they always did these sort of meets at a satellite base a good fifty klicks away, with a solid complement of guards.

As a relatively new member of the Dalyrakes, Kirney had been assigned to the group holding down the fort while Orett and his entourage were gone, a task the other pirates largely found horribly boring. She'd only offered up a token complaint, which earned her Orett's approval and made the others roll their eyes and mutter about sucking up. That was perfectly fine with her; she didn't need any of their approval but Orett's for her plan to work, and having a reputation as a goody-two-shoes made it a lot easier to get away with doing things she shouldn't.

Such as what she was doing today.

Helping Myn had actually given her a headstart on her exit strategy, which was to steal one Ugly to escape and disable the rest so they couldn't chase after her right away. She'd already ripped out a few key parts when she was gathering replacements for Myn, so she didn't have nearly as much work to do in the hangar today. She liked this—less time spent meant less time worrying about getting caught.

Uglies were always a bit harder to work on than typical snubfighters, because of their non-standard mishmash of parts. Even if two Uglies were both made by, say, combining parts from an X-wing and a TIE fighter, the parts could still be in completely different positions in the final product, depending on who assembled it and what materials were available at the time. This made it trickier to identify the key components to disable, especially since Kirney wasn't exactly a trained mechanic.

Still, she made fairly good time, managing to strategically rip out or rewire parts of the engines or guns for all but one of the Uglies within the time she'd allotted. The one she'd left intact was on the far side of the hangar, which still had a straight shot through the exit door in the ceiling, but wasn't likely to be the first choice for a pilot running to a vehicle. It also had enough recognizeable parts she should be able to fly the thing without too much trouble. And it had shields and an ejector seat, which were always better to have than not.

With that done, she could move on to step two of the plan, which was arguably more dangerous: sneaking into Orett's chambers to steal information from his computer.

Kirney had found out pretty early on in her time with the Dalyrakes that Orett liked to keep things close to the vest, even among the other pirates, so he never left information about their overall operations lying around where the others could see it. He preferred to keep track of everything himself and dispense information as needed for them to complete operations. This meant data about his contacts and plans, in particular, was kept secure on an encrypted computer in his quarters, which were locked at all times with both a keycard and a number code.

Luckily, for all his paranoia Orett wasn't actually _that_ careful when it came to his subordinates. So he'd let them follow him as far as the door to his quarters to discuss upcoming missions, and sometimes he'd punch in the code while they were still standing there. And he didn't always remember to block their view while he was doing it, either. So it had only taken Kirney a few rounds of walking back to his quarters with him to piece together the code. From there, all she'd had to do was lift the keycard off him one day, quickly make a copy of it using some specialized equipment she'd brought to Vilath with her, and slip it back into his pocket with him none the wiser.

She liked the incompetent paranoid types. Not only were they sloppy, they _thought_ they were secure, which could make them even sloppier than the non-paranoid types. Nice, easy marks.

There were a few other pirates still in the base, but they were mostly off playing cards and otherwise amusing themselves, rather than paying any attention to what Kirney was doing. Most of the pirates were men, which had made it simple enough for her to distance herself from them—Fiona was a bit of a loner and not the type to make herself into "one of the boys", so after the first few failed attempts, the men hadn't tried very hard to invite her to join in on things like card games. This meant she didn't have to worry about them looking for her while she working.

She quietly made her way to the corridor where Orett's quarters were located and headed for the keypad. One green light lit up when she punched in the code, then another when she swiped the keycard, and she exhaled in relief as the door slid open. One obstacle cleared.

Kirney stepped inside, making sure the door closed and locked again behind her, and glanced around. There was a fairly conspicuous terminal set into the wall across from the door; she sat down on the chair in front of it and pulled her slicing gear out of her pack. She hadn't been able to find out any hints about the encryption on the terminal, but Orett was no computer expert, so she was hoping that he'd used a standard protocol that would be easy to crack.

She booted up the terminal. It wanted Orett's fingerprint to decrypt the data, which she obviously didn't have, so she plugged in the dongle from her slicing kit and waited.

After a few minutes of watching various password combinations flash across the screen, the device finally settled on the correct one, and the computer unlocked with a beep. Lists of files and folders appeared, with helpful names like "Contacts" and "Upcoming Operations".

Kirney grinned, and set to work.

 

* * *

 

Myn stepped back from the X-wing, wiping his hands off on a rag, and looked up at the fighter. "Looking good, Clink?"

He couldn't see the console from where he was, but Clink's answering trill was cheerful enough he didn't need a translation. "Think we can get out of here, then?"

Another cheerful trill.

"All right." Myn pulled the camo cover the rest of the way off, stowed it in the cargo hold, and climbed into the cockpit. They had to be quick on the way out—Kirney said the pirates would be occupied for most of today, but they'd probably still notice a ship leaving the planet when there wasn't supposed to be a ship on the planet in the first place. The faster he got out, the less likely they were to be able to shoot at him before he left.

He was starting on his pre-flight checks when Clink whistled at him again. `Comm traffic detected on an open channel.`

"Odd. I thought that meeting of theirs was supposed to be pretty far away from here." He thought for a moment. "Patch it through?"

Clink gave him an affirmative beep, and unknown voices emerged from the console. "—to Fang One, we're heading home earlier than expected. Apparently he's on a tight schedule today, no time for chitchat."

"Copy that, Fang Two. We'll get the welcome mats ready. And clean up all the debauchery we got up to while you were gone."

"You better not have set anything on fire this time."

"There's a reason we don't let Taluka make the drinks anymore, Fang Two."

Myn frowned and checked the chrono. It was still a few hours before they were supposed to return to base; Kirney wouldn't be done with her end of things yet. They might catch her in the act, if she couldn't scramble fast enough.

She probably had a contingency plan for that. She had a lot of experience with this sort of thing, after all. And she should be able to hear the comm traffic as well, so she'd have some time to abort whatever she was doing. She could handle herself just fine. She didn't need him to come save her.

He should just fire up the X-wing and leave, like they'd planned.

But what if she was in the middle of something and didn't hear the comms? What if whatever she'd done was too obvious to hide, with that many pirates back on the base? What if she couldn't get what she needed to extract herself?

What kind of ass would he be, if he just left her there in that situation?

He powered up the engines. "Get me the coordinates of that comm signal, Clink. We're going to go run interference for Kirney."

 

* * *

 

Kirney was watching the transfer progress bar steadily fill up as files downloaded to her datapad, when she heard her comlink chirp. "All hands, report to the hangar bay. Fang Two incoming, with one prisoner."

She froze and stared down at the device. They weren't supposed to be back for hours yet, and certainly not with a prisoner. What did that mean? She picked up the comlink and thumbed it on. "Control, Sarn. Who's the prisoner?"

The pirate at the comm station sounded gleeful. "They found our intruder on the way back. Apparently the idiot just flew up and started shooting at them."

She swore inwardly. "What an idiot. I'll be there in a minute."

"Roger that."

Kirney rested her elbows on the console and held her head in her hands for a minute. Myn was supposed to _leave_ , not...whatever it was he tried to do instead. She hadn't been kidding when she said they'd probably shoot him. Sure, they'd taken him prisoner to find out why he was here, but once they found out the truth, or if he refused to tell them anything, they wouldn't have any more use for him.

She looked at the terminal screen. 62% transferred. Possibly not enough; she didn't know for sure what all was in there and which parts would be useful to her. Everything she needed could still be lurking in that last 38%. And there was no way she'd be able to get back here to finish the download if she went to the hangar to help Myn.

Myn could take care of himself. He did it all the time. And it was his own fault, really; she'd feel responsible if he'd gotten captured following her plan, but this was all him. She didn't have any obligation to go rescue him.

63% transferred.

Kirney unplugged the datapad, and ran out of the room.

 

* * *

 

Myn had a few long minutes after the Dalyrakes marched him into the hangar to think about the choices that had gotten him here.

In hindsight, his plan had been pretty ill-conceived, and if someone under his command had done the same thing, he would have most definitely chewed them out for it. On the other hand, hopefully he'd given Kirney more time to get what she needed, and they hadn't shot him yet. Maybe he could still worm his way out of this.

Maybe.

The man who seemed to be in charge—Orett, Kirney had called him?—gestured at Myn with his blaster. "So, why don't you start by—"

He didn't have a chance to finish before all the lights in the hangar went out. Myn heard various swears and shouts of dismay from the pirates, and then over top of them, a female voice:

"Myn, get down!"

He ducked instinctively, and heard blaster fire fly over his head toward one of the pirates behind him. Judging by the new burst of swearing, it connected.

Myn squinted in the darkness, trying to figure out where Kirney was, but to no avail. He might be able to steal a blaster from one of the pirates while they were distracted, but he risked getting caught in the crossfire that way. Plus Kirney presumably had some kind of plan, so it was probably better for him to just stay out of the way for now and let her handle it.

There was an Ugly behind him and to the left, he remembered, relatively close to the wall. He headed in that direction, as quickly as he could manage while staying low to the ground. He stumbled right into a pirate in the process, but gave them a hard kick to the back of the knee and shoved them in the opposite direction before continuing on. He found the Ugly by touch, then crouched down between it and the wall.

Someone else was shouting. "What in blue blazes are you doing, Sarn? Stop firing!"

"My name isn't Sarn!" Kirney yelled back, punctuated by more blaster fire. "It's Slane! You remember, the shuttle pilot who was minding her own damn business before your goons decided to come after her. So no, I don't think I will!"

"You little—!" Another round of blaster fire, some scuffling sounds, more swearing, and a grunt of pain from someone—Orett? Myn hoped it was Orett.

Someone grabbed Myn's arm, and he almost yelped before he heard Kirney's voice whisper "Shh!" She tugged him to the right, and he quite happily went along. He saw a door appear in front of them, indicator lights almost painfully bright in the pitch black. There was the beeping of buttons being pressed, and then he was being pushed through the now-open door into whatever lay beyond.


	5. Escape

Kirney sealed the door behind them, then tapped a few commands into her datapad. "I'm going to turn the lights on," she warned, then entered the final command and quickly squeezed her eyes shut.

The corridor was bathed in artificial light. Kirney tugged off the night vision goggles she'd grabbed from a pile of supplies on the way to the hangar and cautiously opened one eye. Myn stood in front of her, wincing and squinting both eyes. "Well," he said, bringing a hand up to shield his eyes, "you certainly have great timing."

"What are you even doing here, Myn? You were supposed head out as soon as the X-wing was repaired."

"I heard them over the comms saying they were coming back earlier than planned. So I tried to distract them a bit for you." His lips quirked. "Obviously it wasn't the most brilliant plan, but..."

Kirney sighed. "I didn't hear them saying the others were coming back. Everyone here was mostly together, so I guess they didn't see the need to notify the whole base. At least, not until they had a prisoner in tow." She gave him a small smile. "So you did get me better warning, I suppose. Even if it was a terrible idea."

"Well, you saved me from myself, so it worked out okay in the end." Myn lowered his hand from his eyes and glanced around. "Assuming we can get out of here, anyway. Where are we?"

"It's just a corridor off the hangar." Kirney tapped some buttons on her datapad, pulling up the map of the base she'd downloaded from Orett's terminal. "I sealed the door with Orett's special override code, but they'll probably figure it out pretty quickly once they regroup, so we need to get moving."

"Any way we could circle around back to the other side of the hangar, to grab one of the Uglies?"

She shook her head. "We could, but I doubt they're going to leave the hangar unguarded after this. But—" She turned the screen around and held it up to show to him. "The map I got from Orett's computer has an extra section on it, that wasn't on the maps he gave out to us. It's big enough to have a small hangar, so I think he might have an emergency escape vehicle there, for when things go to hell."

"Probably tight security, though, if it's his personal bolt vehicle."

Kirney grinned. "But the access override code was in his computer."

"Oh. Well, in that case." Myn gestured gallantly. "Lead the way to the thievery."

 

* * *

 

Luckily, the hidden section of the map was on the same side of the base they were, so they didn't have to double back around toward the hangar and its swarm of angry Dalyrakes. Kirney took the lead with her map, leading them both through the corridors until they reached a dead end with a small, unassuming door. If it weren't for the security keypad next to it, Myn would have guessed it was a janitorial supply closet, not a secret hangar. Which was, presumably, the point.

"Hey, Kirney," he asked as she looked up the access code on her datapad, "did you manage to get all the data you needed off the boss's terminal?"

She frowned slightly. "Some of it. I didn't have time to look through everything I transferred, so I don't know how much of that is actually useful, unfortunately."

"Ah. Sorry, I kind of messed up your plan there. And made you blow your cover, for that matter."

"It's fine, I'll figure something out. It's not like this was a critical military operation." She smiled. "And blowing my cover was actually kind of fun, honestly. I don't usually get to go 'Ha, I tricked you!' at my targets on the way out."

"More intelligence operations should end that way, if you ask me. But that might be why I'm not in intelligence anymore."

Kirney laughed and punched in the access code. "Well, let's see what we have here..." The door slid open, and they stepped inside.

It was indeed a small hangar, just big enough for a roof exit and the _Sentinel_ -class shuttle parked in the middle. Myn whistled. "A whole shuttle? I was expecting another snubfighter."

"Better for carrying the loot with you on the way out, I guess." Kirney walked forward to do a quick visual inspection of the shuttle. "Conveniently, I've gotten a lot of practice flying these things lately."

"Useful. We could fit the X-wing in there, even."

"We could." Kirney tapped her datapad to her chin thoughtfully. "Where did you leave it?"

"At the edge of the forest nearby. Not sure if the pirates tried to do anything with it yet; I think they were more interested in me."

She nodded. "Let's drop you off there, then we can fly out separately in case they start shooting at us, then load the X-wing onto the shuttle once we're off the planet."

"Works for me. Let's do it."

 

* * *

 

Myn didn't even get the chance to shoot at much on the way off-planet—apparently the Dalyrakes gave up before they found the one functioning Ugly, so the only defense they could muster were the turrets attached to the base, which Myn dispatched of easily enough with the X-wing's lasers. Orett had a few more choice words for Kirney over the comm, which she and Myn both ignored, and then they were out in open space, beyond the pirates' reach.

Kirney stopped the shuttle long enough for Myn to dock the X-wing inside, and as he was getting himself and Clink out of the snubfighter he felt the telltale jolt of the ship entering hyperspace. He headed off toward the cockpit, Clink trailing behind him.

Kirney was still sitting in the pilot's seat, peering at a datapad in her lap as she braided her hair over one shoulder. It was the same hairstyle he'd seen her with in the final message she'd sent him after Zsinj, so he guessed she was settling back into her Kirney Slane persona.

She glanced up as he walked in. "Hey. Did you get docked okay?"

"Yeah, everything's fine." Myn sat down in the copilot's seat next to her. "Where are we headed?"

"This is just a short hop to meet up with Kolot, my copilot, who's been hanging out nearby in case I needed backup. Then he and I will head to Corellia and get back to business." She focused her attention on her hair again. "What are you going to do?"

"Weeeell." Myn rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I already lost a few days dealing with all of this, so I really should head back to the fleet soon. But I need to refuel the X-wing first anyway, and I just happen to know someone on Corellia who runs a transport business, so I was thinking I could ask her if she had any spare fuel lying around."

Kirney smirked. "I'm sure you'll be able to work something out with her there. What about after that?"

He'd been giving that one some thought over the last few days, actually. "Now that the Thrawn situation is under control... Rogue Squadron doesn't really need me as much anymore. And I hear the Imperial presence on Corellia isn't as bad these days, so I was thinking I could move back home. Maybe ask that friend with the transport business if she has any job openings."

"Hm." She tied off her braid and turned in her chair to look at him square on. "Are you sure that's what you want? You might want to take more than a couple days under pressure to think about it."

"I'm going to do that, on the way back to the fleet. But I'm pretty sure. If you're fine with it, that is."

Kirney smiled shyly. "Yeah. That would be nice."


End file.
